Discontinuation of Linux 2.2.x and old wireless extensions support

[gARetH baBB]

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Mark Glines wrote:

> currently running unpatched 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 with no problems.

I also run unpatched .19 and .20 boxes, though they're not "heavily" used
- I am going to look at the ext3 patches though, there are meant to be
serious data loss issues somewhere, and the boxes I do use 2.4 on are
primarily for ext3 for large discs ...

> The v2.4 series of kernels has better support for my hardware than v2.2,

As said, the laptops I use hostap on just don't like 2.4 - I've tried,
they have Slackware 8.1 on which normally installs by default with a 2.4
kernel - I think at the time I narrowed it down to something to do with
the ISA-PCMCIA bridge support (this is not an hostap issue, I couldn't
even get a network card going to complete the install).

I may prod it again, though at the moment I'm more than happy sticking
with 2.2.

> So, I'm curious whether your opinion of the stability of v2.4 is based
> on fact or conjecture.  What patches are these that you refer to?

Ext3, NFS and some others (eg. ptrace ...). I know one heavily used box
which had alsorts of problems with NFS talking to a Netapp until it was
patched into oblivion with trond nfs.

And we won't go into the mess that is 21pre IDE ...

If 2.2 support really has to be dropped than so be it, I was just putting
a (possibly feable) anti-2.4 rant before the guillotine drops !